Valley Nordic S2 E13: Systems Thinking and Complex Systems

Arne is back on the podcast. We discuss analysis vs. synthesis, linear thinking vs. systems thinking, parts vs. systems and what are the types of complex systems. We explore a new way of looking at the world and how systems thinking can be applied to startups and investing. Chander tried to make it a box-free episode but Arne found a way to sneak in his boxes.

Useful links:

1. Systems Thinking

2. Complex Systems

3. New England Complex Systems Institute 

Transcript

Chander Chawla: 0:01

Hello, everyone, welcome back. This is Chander in Palo Alto, still in

Unknown: 0:08

shelter in place, and I'm very glad that Arne is back with us.

Arne Tonning: 0:13

Yeah, hello. This is Arne here from Oslo, also in sort of lockdown scenario in Oslo.

Unknown: 0:23

So how are things going Arna, it's been like almost a month. We are in Lockdown or Shelter in Place. Yeah. So situation seems to be improving in the sense that the number of infected are going down in in Norway and schools are about to start again in a week, a little bit more than a week, so there's going to be easing, and that's going to be interesting to see. Whether it's that will lead to flare ups and new lockdowns, or whether it's going to be on some path to normalization over time. Wow. So kids are actually going to go to school in a week. So the preschoolers are going in on Monday, in, you know, four days, and then young school kids are coming a week later, if everything goes according to plan. Wow. Actually, this will be interesting. I think everybody is concerned about coronavirus. So can you share your observations on how the Nordics are dealing with it differently than the US? Well, there are also differences within the Nordics I'm obviously mostly familiar with with Norway and somewhat with Denmark, but all of them, it seems to me that Norway, Denmark, in to some extent, Finland, is dealing with it somewhat similarly, with pretty clear lockdowns and a lot of things essentially stopped so schools and preschools and a number of businesses are essentially closed down by law, whereas Sweden has opted for a more open approach, where it's more recommended that people do this and do that so clearly, less restrictions and and therefore also a higher level of activity coming through this and, and essentially that means that there are more infected people, although that's not as clear in Sweden, because testing is is less broad, but clearly much more deaths as well in Sweden. So I guess one of the more interesting questions is, of course, whether that means we'll be through quicker as well, and it's more that the aggregated numbers are over a smaller period of time. I guess that's the key question here. But the people I speak with my friends in London, Malmo, they are observing lockdown like they say. They are at home, not going out. So even if it's voluntary, the people I know, they are voluntarily not going out. It's not that you you do it still, a lot of people do. But of course, the effect in the short term is much bigger, if it's it's observed by everyone, and I think that's the effect you've seen early on in the other countries, here in the Nordics. And how do you see we, in the US are dealing with it differently. Well, you know, President Trump has sort of been saying how badly things are in Sweden to find somebody pick on. And in fact, I think possibly the US has the worst approach of any country, anywhere in the world. And the reason for saying that is that the US, it seems like, was hit pretty late, so should have had the best opportunity to learn from everyone. Secondarily, once it hit, the reaction was denial and late reaction, with a few exceptions of some states, so no action, and then once there is a reaction, it's also bad in that it's just badly organized, and secondarily, it's different from place to place. So do you have no common approach and no common result, and therefore you will have this spin around where, where there's no control overall. So the only way to seem to go through this is to to have it blow, sort of blow up by itself and in a disorderly fashion. So I'm I'm surprised how bad. Athlete to be managed. Yeah, I mean, I hope it's over soon. And just to remark that doesn't mean that all states have handled it necessarily badly. It just means that they won't reap the benefits of a good management of it, because they will have, you know, effects from other states handling it, or on the federal level, handling it badly, right? So there's some interconnectivity of effects here, yeah, yeah. And that is actually good segue into our topic of the day, that is systems thinking, where you study, you know, if I had to describe it in one sentence, it's the study of interconnectivity of things, which Arne was just saying how and if you think about it, if we had thought that way, looked at the interconnectivity of all things, when it came out of China, the whole world should have gotten on alert and taken measures to stop it at that time. So we thought systems thinking would be a good topic to discuss in context of where things are and how startups can benefit from that type of thinking? Yeah, cool. And this is a topic that you are have both been thinking a lot about Chander, and also that you've been sort of thinking about for a while, and are a topic that you like. So can you say a little bit about why, why you got interested in in the first place? Yeah, that's actually a good story, and it's related to our last podcast on education. So I studied undergrad in India and specialized in electrical engineering, and then I came to the US to study business. So I have an MBA from University of Miami, and I went there because they gave me a scholarship. So it was pretty easy decision, and at that time, I didn't really know much about university system in the US, and also about the US, because there was no internet in India when in late 90s, when I came so then, you know, you start working, you start hearing These names about, you know, Harvard and MIT and Stanford, etc. So I just, I was curious how, like, what are the teaching that's so special? Why are these places so famous? So I went there to attend executive programs, to see what is so special there. And, you know, there is nothing special. It's like you attend, you know, an executive program over weeks, and all the summary of all that is, oh, yeah, listen to your customer. So I was kind of disappointed in the quality of the content. And once you've been doing business, it's, you know there, there isn't much new, you're in it. And then, by chance, I attended this program at MIT on system dynamics, which I loved. So it's basically study of systems instead of studying parts of the system. So let me explain what it means. So in the most of the world we have today is built on linear thinking, or analytical thinking, meaning if we want to understand something, we take it apart, we understand each part, and then we aggregate the thinking together. So to see what we what that thing is, for example, if we want to understand a car, we take it apart, we say, this is the motor, this is the engine. These are the tire. There's the steering wheel. And if you understand each part and roll of the part, then you understand the car. Similarly, I have an MBA, so the classes I attended were marketing, finance, logistics, strategy, so if I understand parts of business, that means I understand business. So as an MBA, there is no class titled business, you know. So that's how most of the world is structured. Any big company you see, there's marketing, finance, etc. And I could. India, the government, things are structured that way, and that happened in the Renaissance era. In 1400 that's where this idea of linear thinking or analysis came about, how to understand thing, and it's been continuing since then. And the field of system thinking is based on synthesis, which is the opposite of analysis. So to understand something for let's keep the example of car. You understand what is it part of? So a car is part of the transportation system. So then what you do is you study the transportation system and see what this what role does a car play in the transportation system? And then step three is you disaggregate that, learning to understand you know why that car exists. So the linear thinking answers or an analytical thinking answers the question of how things work, and the synthesis, or systems thinking answers the question why things are the way they are. So this is basic difference. And then, if you may hear this term, complexity science, complex systems, complex adaptive systems. There are a few other things, but the idea of all of them is to understand the study of the parts to see how parts give rise to behavior of the system. So coming back to the education side at MIT, from there, I went to study, there's a think tank called New England complex systems Institute. So I studied with them, or, you know, got into more detail and modeling. I wrote, I think, one or two research papers with the professor. And he's absolute genius person. His name is yanir bariam, then at national to install that thinking, I became executive sponsor of Santa Fe Institute, which is another think tank in this area of system. Well, they call it complexity science, but it's the same idea, and it's like a never ending thing. It's so deep, so it keeps me very intellectually engaged. I've been reading about it for at least 2007 until now, 13 years, and that has given me a very broad and good perspective on now, on almost everything, economics, human nature, startups, business, investing, etc. That was, I think, the longest answer I ever gave. Arne. Well, there we go. And you not only started, or not only explain how you got interested into this, but you also started talking about the topic itself and how to think about that. So, so one of the things when you discuss that, one of the concepts there that I, I find hardest to understand, is this analysis versus synthesis thinking, because in my mind, those are not necessarily different, although they have different labels, it's more about the scope of what you analyze. So both, in my mind, our kind of analysis is just that synthesis has a much, much broader scope and includes more components in the analysis and how they interact, such as being but that's in my mind, more a labeling issue, that's confusing, that more than a clarification. I let me give an I think it depends on the context. So if you understand how, then you do analysis. If you want to understand why, then you do synthesis. So for example, let's take the, you know, the MBA example. So MBA, you know, I studied Marketing, Finance, etc, so you don't study interactivity, of how marketing interacts with logistics, and how, if in logistics, you do this that has the implication of, you know. On strategy, etc, so you don't understand study interactivity. On the other hand, in in the systems thinking you do study interactivity. So for example, you see, okay, you know, marketing is part of business. So how does, what role does marketing play in business? So that you study interactivity. So every system is part of some other system. So then you see, okay, what is the role this system plays in? You know, the bigger system? It's part of make sense. Yeah, it does indeed make sense. It's just that to me, you know, analysis can both answer how and why, and whatever is within your scope of your analysis can also include more complex things like interconnectedness or feedback, for example. But in case of let's look at the car. Example you study, you know, car is called a car. It used to be called horseless carriage, because it comes from, you know, horses. They basically replace the horse with an engine. So that's why the engine is upfront. So there is no you wouldn't understand that from, you know, analysis. So you'll have to go into the synthesis side to understand, Okay, why is the engine there? So history, it used part of transportation system used to be this way. Yeah, some of the like other buzzwords you would hear, self organizing, system, the concept of emergence, chaos, all that falls in this broad category of systems thinking or complexity science that's Yep. Are there any other sort of key features that you think would be worthwhile bringing to our attention? Yeah, from I was thinking about that, you know, when we chose the topic, so for a startup, so you have to see, let's say you're a startup in Norway. So you have to see, you know, the system you're part of is the Nordic startup system, if you're creating a startup there. So yeah, and for any startup to scale or succeed. I think we discussed that in one of the previous podcasts, you need four things. You need an idea that becomes a product. You need a market for that idea. You need capital, and you need people, two of those things. So it's the interactivity of these things, if you study that that is, you know, synthesis, or applying systems thinking, but for that market. So if you are planning a startup in Norway, then you have to see, can you get the people in that market, because you have to operate within the system, can you get the capital in that market. And is the market for your product in Norway, or is that outside of Norway, like the what do the VCs think if you need capital? What is, how do they make investment decision? They may be more, you know, cash flow profit oriented than scale oriented. So if your idea is to, you know, create the new Facebook or Pinterest, where you have to basically spend money until you have billion users before you turn on advertising. Then Norway may not be the best place to start or do it. Then. So those are the things you think about and apply as a startup, and it's, I think one of the is very relevant in terms of decision making. I think we did a podcast on that, on how you make decision when there are unknowns, because you start thinking as a system, or in terms of system thinking, that makes the decision making much more clear, like the coronavirus example we were discussing if, like some people were thinking of it as system, including engineer who I studied with, Like, he's been warning since January to the US like because he understands interconnectivity, so you then can foresee things before others do, yeah, yeah, and. Terms of, you know, like we always talk about customer lifetime value. So if you like, I think one example, oh, another name I want to mention. Mention is Russell Ackoff. So he was a, he was big in applying, um, now in the notes, I'll post the blog post where I explain his ideas. So basically, like when you one example he gives is, if you have a headache, you don't do brain surgery. You know, you take Advil, and because we understand how that part of the body goes into bloodstream and it goes to the head and helps with the end. But it happens in business all the time, more in bigger companies we do, you know, brain surgeries for headaches all the time. You know, why are the sales down here? Okay, we didn't do enough marketing. Let's do more marketing. So there isn't much like thinking understanding of why is done in the business world. So one of the things that for a startup, you have to be crystal clear off is, why are people buying your product? If it has, you know, 10 features, what can you remove when people will still buy it? You know, generally that level of depth and testing is not done, but it's it depends on the company. A lot of times it's not it's not possible, but sometimes even when it's possible, it's not done. Yeah, so the so the system thinking is about how to look at how the whole fits together, and how things impact whatever you're working on, and therefore making good decisions in whatever part of the overall system you operate in, and the example you give about, you know, okay, so we're not getting enough customers. Let's put more money into marketing. For example, I think it's in the corporate space. There's one element that is, the larger organization, the more likely it is that you have silos and and that also means that wherever you can apply your force being, human resources or capital is oftentimes within your your silo and and the bigger it is, and the bigger organization, the less connected it tends to be with the other silos that it's meant to work together with. And you can't necessarily even see the interaction or interconnectivity, and you also can't apply your force across those boundaries. And this, in my mind, is one of the reasons why startup has a good opportunity to compete, because a smaller organization with less silos, have better interconnectivity within the organization between those parts. So if you, if you manage to see the whole picture and think in the right way, you can also therefore operate more effectively across these interconnectivities or boundaries to make things happen in the right way. Yep, absolutely. That's very good point. I think that's the advantage startups have over big companies, because there's more interconnectivity, and that gives them the ability to move faster. Yesterday, I was talking to a friend, and he was asking me, oh, you work in tech, like, can you explain to me why zoom, which is like a startup, although they went public, but much small player in the tech space. Why are they succeeding when Google has Google meet, Hangout, Facebook has Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, video, Microsoft has Skype. So how is it that like this company get went from 10 million daily active users to 200 daily active users in you know, a month or less, and I I go whether multiple reasons, one, the user experience is better, etc, but I think the main reason is, by the time in these bigger companies, let's say Microsoft, whoever running Skype, he or she got calendars aligned to get a meeting. That takes a month. By the time they just get on this get to the right interaction. This startup, or the smaller company, has already taken over the market. It just getting calendar aligned in big company for the right people to interact. It's a long process, because they have too many things or the. Prioritization doesn't happen at the right time. So I think that's why, if there are people who are worried about, oh, you know, I shouldn't do this, because Microsoft or Google or whoever can come and do this, you don't have to worry about a big company coming and doing what you're doing, they just are too slow. If they could do that, none of the startups would exist. You know, startups exist mainly because of the speed they can operate. Yeah, of course, the startup itself has that advantage of interconnectivity and sort of better ability to look at the overall picture internally. But of course, the startup is also part of the market, and the market is a messy place with, you know, supply and demand and competition and and all of these external factors as well that that needs to be looked at as part of the overall system. The analogy being the car and the transportation system here, and that's a place necessarily, where the startup does not have an advantage, because in that number of signals and interconnectivities out there, there's some things that have proved to be very important, and there are lots of things that prove to be a lot of noise as well, and being able to filter and get an overview there is, is sometimes where a larger organization just has a better overview, but, but even a startup can read those signals right. And if you read the important ones, you focus on the important ones for execution as well. Yep, yeah, and they can do this alignment and interactivity between the different groups or functions much faster and respond faster. Yeah, yeah. Another thing I want to mention, which is an important concept, is the type of systems we've talked we're talking about systems thinking. So I would say, and this comes from your near barium. There are three types of systems. One is where the system itself is not highly dependent on the parts. It's so it's weakly dependent on the parts. So, for example, a piece of paper, let's say it's a system of system of molecules organized in a certain way you take the, you know, a piece of paper away from that paper, then both the piece of small piece of paper and large piece of paper remain, retain the properties of paper, so both system and the parts are not dependent on each other for survival, or whatever they find for their function. The second is where the system is weakly dependent on the part, but the part is highly dependent on the system. So for example, a tree, you take the branch off, and the branch dies, but three grows another branch, and third is a system where both the part and the system are interdependent on each other. So, for example, a goat, you know, you cut the head off, and then both the head dies and the goat dies. So that's a way of thinking about what type of system you're operating in, or you're looking at and understanding the relationship between the parts and the system. Yep, yeah. And this, you think everybody knows about prisoners dilemma. I wouldn't say everyone, but it's a fairly well known, okay, example, or whatever we should call it, yeah, then we don't have to discuss it, because that's another concept used a lot in the complex systems or Systems Thinking world, because your response depends on interactivity based on two prisoners, or the results affect how people respond. Yeah, so what's the like in terms of investing. Thing you look at, I think investors generally do more analysis than synthesis. So you look at every company and you analyze it, you know, based on, you know, the market size. Or why don't you tell us, like, What? What? How do you make your investment decision? Let's say you want to invest in a startup. Well, let's say the the normal way of approaching it is you, you kind of meet startups, you, you do, like, a quick view of all right? Are these, like, really special and talented people. You think can build a great company. That's a very sort of subjective thing, but nevertheless, there are, you know, ways of looking at you're generally looking to invest in very ambitious and very clever people. Secondarily, you're looking at, is there a product here that solves a big pain point. I'm talking now, typically in the B to B space, which is space I'm operating most in, not in in like some consumer thing that has a different agenda, but in the B to B space is generally, is it solving a big problem, and therefore, is it worthwhile solving, and will people pay for it? That's kind of the pain point, and the product side of it, and does it fit that needs? So there's like people the product, product type will be on it. And secondarily, you know, is the potential big enough? Can it grow big enough, quickly enough to make it a venture investment? So people product potential is sort of the thing you look at and triangulate quickly around to know whether you want to spend time on something secondarily. At the next level, you start analyzing dimensions of, well, I forgot one more thing is, obviously you look if there's sort of traction and metrics that you can quickly say, Well, you know, is this already, you know, I in flight to be good direction. But beyond that, it's more you start analyzing multiple dimensions of it. It could be market, it could be competition, it could be a number of good market elements and so forth. And that's multi dimension analysis, but that that falls in the analysis domain that you described before. And finally, there's a financial aspect of it where you you look at the return profile, potential return profile, of this and you know whether valuations can can make sense in and capital need relative to where you're operating in your your market, which is also a a analysis game, I would say that that some of dimensions around competition and market and so forth clearly deals with external factors that impact the potential investment case and such. It's not a silo. It's not a pure place, Silo based analysis in single dimensions. There are elements of dealing with external factors that impact and and so forth. But it's not it's not necessarily thought of as systems, thinking more about external factors and interdependencies. And that could also relate to market, if there are partners involved in channels and this sort of thing, yeah. So how much of the so all the investment decision you make are for that specific startup as standalone startup, like, can they succeed? I, I, not only can they succeed, are they likely to succeed? Big, yeah, or a, is there a risk reward that makes sense to make that investment? But, but it's a yes, standalone decision. You have a criteria, product, people, etc, but if you invest, you think that they will become, you know, super big and super fast, or something like that. Yeah, yes. That is correct. I would say that there are segments of the market that operate somewhat differently, in the sense that they might have a much more thesis oriented approach, where they say this particular market segment is going to be huge in the future. And I have belief in that, and I'm trying to figure out who are the likely candidates take that market and either, and if it's not there, they might even be looking to fund somebody to build it. But most likely, there are already a number of players going after that opportunity, and it's more about, you know, radar screen, finding the most likely winner and investing in the market leader that. That that does make sense, or is an approach of larger VCs that are playing sort of a global market, or like US market, or something like that, which is a much more top down approach based on a very strong market segment thesis. And do you look at, okay, this startup you want to invest in, it's going to become part of my portfolio, where I have other startups. Then those other startups are targeting big market segments or industries or whatever. Then, how does this fit in? Like you want to solve multiple startups or the start? Let me restate. Do you want the new startup you are investing in to solve a different problem than the other startups in the portfolio solving, or you want multiple startups solving the same problem in different ways? Yes, I would claim that there's not a system oriented approach to portfolio building. The portfolio building is more about avoiding conflicts of interest and secondarily a spreading risk. So let's say if my portfolio today was all about digital, tech for the travel industry, I would be have a horrendous coronavirus portfolio and and you don't want that. So it's more about a diversification enough so you're not too exposed to specific risks that are joint amongst your portfolio. Okay, I can, I can take a couple of examples where I think from the investment space, where I think it's clear that system thinking has been failing and where that's caused problems. So, so the most obvious example, I would say, the financial crisis in 2008 2009 which was essentially the financial system being brought down by by packaged financial products that where you can discuss whether they were, you know, linear products or statistical products. But one example being like credit default swaps, which is essentially a collection of financial risk that's packaged right and and judge based on statistical basis that they won't all fail, and if they do, you know, there's a portfolio approach to it that that picks it up and as a whole of the market is not significant enough to to cause any problems. They're sort of the risk allocation on a statistical basis. Makes sense in isolation, if you look at one package or two packages or something like that. However, when the risks of all the assets are correlated and they become a substantial part of the overall market in in size, the let's say the interdependencies and assumptions around those don't hold anymore, and Also the assumptions about statistical basis that was the fundament for doing the packaging don't hold. And when that unravels, you have a financial crisis. So I would say this is an example or where, where you didn't take a broad enough view of the systematic risk and and manage the risk on a component basis, rather than on the system basis, and that caused the failure. Yeah, that's very good example. Yeah. The secondary approach is, sort of, this is sort of the first example is sort of a macro financial market issue that the the other example is, is like from the venture industry and this is where, if you look at the venture industry historically, what drives returns in the venture industry is, is big hits in funds, right? So to have a great fund, you should be an investor in one of the great outcomes. So if you're an investor in apple at the time, you would have a great outcome. If you're an investor in Google at the time, you would have a great outcome, and and Facebook and so forth, right? And if you look at historical returns on a on a statistical basis, those sort of great funds, right? You. So that means a you have to have a big hit in your portfolio, and secondarily, it sort of trickles down to if you have the biggest hits, then you win, right? But as fun funds go bigger, essentially, to have a meaningful outcome of a fund, you have to have one outcome that's like hundreds of millions of dollars. So preferably passing million dollar mark to have a successful fund. That's just the statistical basis. If you look at it historically and but if you look at that history, the reason why there were good funds was that they invested in good the good companies, not the fact that they were highly valued, but but when you start looking at those statistics, essentially your job becomes getting a unicorn into your portfolio, and and, and you look at getting the answer by creating that answers, you go and find a company, and if you just value it At a billion dollars, you have unicorn in your portfolio, and statistically, you should then have a successful, you know, fund, but, but if you, if you invest in, in two men and a dog, and you value them at a billion dollars, it doesn't mean that you can realize the billion dollars, right? That's, that's the difference between correlation and causation, right? So just valuing something at a billion dollars doesn't make it a successful fund. And that's just this, this particular like in, let's say, 2014 2015 there was this inflation in the unicorn segment. And there were clearly a lot of unicorns that hasn't come out to what they were expected, simply because this was sort of the logic that put price tag on them. So so once again, maybe not as clear an example of a failure of systems thinking, but somewhat in the flavor of it anyway. Yeah, no, it makes perfect sense, at least to me. It is clear how the VC industry lacked in systems thinking, and we pointed that out in our analysis of companies last year, we analyzed many of the IPOs, and we raised these questions about the valuations, not about the macro investing side, but more on the individual company. So I have a question for you, just like the listeners here are very fortunate in that they have two electrical engineers speaking here and and if you're an electrical engineer, you've had to take some some classes where some system elements are definitely top right. Some you know cybernetics classes, or you've done blood loss transforms or something like that. So sort of fundamentals of systems are maybe, you know, come more natural to some engineers than then, you know, the public at large, but the system thinking approach is more about thinking of some of these contexts and putting them in a more broader context, but possibly slightly less mathematical than what they're done in an engineering context. And I've never really thought about myself as a systems thinker at the same time, when I look at things, I tend to look at, well, you know what forces from the outside are impacting, and is there any feedback in the system and this sort of thing? So there's sort of a little bit of a thinking around it. Even if I don't systemize it, I don't have a method to the madness, so to speak. So I'm now here looking for the box or the or the tools to apply the system thinking. Do you have any tips or or is it free thinking? Philosophy needs engineering. Let's see if there are anything's going on there that impacts my thing. It's interesting you, I think, as a VC, you try to put things in a box, and lot of what you do is analysis, right? They talk to you. It seems like you do understand systems. So it's, I think first thing I would say is have box free thinking. Don't try to put anything in a box, because then you are confining your thinking to that domain, or, you know, you're not looking it from a new perspective. But the tool would be, I think what, as EV explained, the first thing you ask is, what is this part of whatever you want to understand? Let's say you want to understand, I don't know what. Around here, a phone. Okay, what is the phone? Part of the phone is part of, you know, telecommunication system which gives you the ability to communicate with others. It also an Internet access device. And then you see, okay, what role does it play in the system? It's hard off. So okay, we access the internet, we communicate, we buy things, we use apps, etc, etc. Are there multiple ways of doing that? But this makes it what makes this unique? It's the mobility. You know, you have it with you all the time. It's personal, etc, and then you disaggregate that learning from how the bigger system works, the parent system, and see what that tells you why this thing exists. So this, you know, follow this three step, what is this part of? What role does it play in that bigger system it's part of? And then third, disaggregate that learning. Okay, can I still try to sell you a boxy system for it? Yeah. So I think I use boxes because they're helpful to me, and I think there are other people who are also helped by boxes, although they're maybe not always as square as they they appear. But the way that I think about it is that you know, you start from where you are, and there's probably a box. But one way to look at it is to figure out, what other boxes are there out there, and what are the lines between my box and these boxes? And if there are forces of impacting which way do the arrows go? And do they do they also come back with a feedback loop. So that's, that's kind of how I think, think about these things, and and I there's one particular framework that a number of startups used that I see as the sort of systems thinking tool, even if it's not labeled as that and and that's the business model canvas. So the Business Model Canvas has all these boxes with customer and value proposition and channels and costs and revenue streams and all of these things, which is essentially a way of breaking down your business model, which is a system, into different boxes, and try to figure out how each other boxes work, but also figuring out how these interconnect with each other. And if you change one, how does that impact the rest of your business model? So, so I think that's, that's a very boxy system that actually are a boxy tool that actually implements system thinking. Of course, you can always zoom out and say the business model actually fits in the business, and the business fits in the market and so forth. But at least, I think it is an interesting tool in the business model space that actually has implemented system thinking without labeling it. Labeling it as such good I'm not familiar with it. If you found it useful, then people can look into it and see if they find it useful. That's good. So let me end on a short story or incident. You know, I'm curious by nature, that's why I'm more into why than how. And so in this is few years ago, I was working at a big company, and was late Friday evening, like 9pm I had on something, or I don't know, but I was working late, so my boss was there too, and he called me into his office, and he wanted to give me advice on, you know, how I can get promoted, etc. He said, Oh, you are good, etc, etc. So he was, he praised me. Then he said, But you asked lot of why questions like, he has to explain to me why we want to do something, but, but when the CEO, his boss, asks him something to do. He just does it. He doesn't question him. So I should basically not ask why. And my response was, why exactly i. Yeah, yeah, no, no. But why is a super powerful question, yeah and, and it's surprising how often there's no answer for it, and oftentimes it's like what we've always done it this way or something, and that's when you know you're on to something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. So anything else you want to add Arna to systems thinking? This is very, you know, unusual box free topic, but you found a way to put your boxes in Yeah? We can have a box with y in it. Yeah. Excellent. Now this is fun. Okay, so thanks everybody for joining us. We'll see you next week. Stay safe, and thanks to all the workers who are still working and keeping us, keeping or enabling this work at home. Lifestyle possible, absolutely. See you next time Okay, see you. Bye, bye.